What’s the role about?

Playing a key role in the  John Lewis Partnership’s (JLP) Architecture Team will be challenging, fascinating and rewarding. You will be a subject matter expert within your field of experience,  supporting business strategy development by creating domain strategies and roadmaps for new or existing business propositions and technical capabilities.  You will help to inform the thinking of colleagues from across the business as well as within the Architecture Profession and Technology and Change (T&C).

We are looking for proven Enterprise Architects with extensive experience of the techniques and approaches needed to understand and facilitate change. You will have a deep understanding of the business or technology capabilities within your chosen domain.

This specific role will be responsible for the Enterprise Architecture (strategy, roadmaps, applications) for the Customer Ordering and Fulfilment technologies used across both John Lewis and Waitrose. From a business process point of view, this covers all the technology that supports the management of customer orders (order management), the fulfilment planning of those orders (routing and scheduling systems) through to the physical fulfilment of those customer orders, either direct to a customer, collection or other fulfilment point. With both John Lewis and Waitrose experiencing substantial growth in their online delivery and collection offerings, this role covers a critical and expanding area of the business and architecture (technology) landscape.

What you’ll be doing as an Enterprise Architect:

The JLP Architecture Team is part of the T&C Division which supports approximately 70,000 employees, 360 stores, a turnover of over £11bn, and a transformational IT expenditure in excess of £200m pa.

Working for the domain Lead Enterprise Architect and with a wide range of stakeholders from across JLP you will have the freedom to use your skill and experience to set out the change required to create or enhance compelling business or technical propositions that maximise the potential of our two great brands, John Lewis and Waitrose, and the digital and physical experiences we can offer the customer.

The role blends expertise in the respective technology and/or market areas, along with a strategic outlook, commercial awareness, ability to influence, tenacity, and capability to manage ambiguity and complex (even conflicting) stakeholder relationships to ensure an investment and delivery profile that is aligned to the strategy you create.

What you’ll have (essential skills):

Proven experience as an Enterprise Architect with a practical understanding of  techniques and approaches required within the role. You will be a subject matter expert for the business or technical domain that you will be working in.

Co-Ownership

Demonstrate a commitment to the principles of co-ownership and collaboration to achieve better outcomes for our business

Critical Influence

Empower and influence others to make decisions, resolve challenges and deliver outcomes that are in line with the strategy. Work with business change sponsors and product managers to agree outcomes that achieve business and technology goals. Read stakeholders well, understand their motivations and adjust style accordingly in order to achieve critical level of influence 

Business or Technical Domain Knowledge

Understand how the business or technical capabilities that support JLP or a Product and Platform operate with reference to marketplace good practice.

For Business Domain Knowledge

Understand the capabilities and processes that support customer ordering and fulfilment journeys within General Merchandise and Grocery. Evaluate the level of capability required to achieve stated business outcomes and compare with as-is and marketplace.

For Technical Domain Knowledge

Understand JLPs technology implementations within your domain and where else these technologies are used within and outside of JLP. Influence vendor roadmaps and understand where they can be used to achieve agreed outcomes. Specific technical knowledge required:

• Experience and understanding of technologies that support customer order management (Order Management System) and fulfilment journeys (Scheduling, routing, parcel labelling, parcel tracking, proof of delivery and customer collection)

• Understanding of the key challenges and pitfalls in architecting and implementing Customer Order Management and other fulfilment solutions and evidence of mitigating or overcoming those

• Experience of working with IBM Sterling Order Management system desirable

• Experience of working with following vendors beneficial - Centiro, Metapack, Descartes, Ortec, Microlise 

Strategy Development & Strategic Planning

Develop domain strategies that support the business and technology strategies. Be a subject matter expert within your field of experience to support strategy development. 
 

Sequence Change to Deliver Incremental Business Value

Establish credible domain roadmaps to drive change in business or technical capabilities that maximise business benefit and cost of ownership. Be able to balance strategic architectural vision with pragmatism and options to achieve that vision in an iterative manner, that drives maximum business value where possible 

Assure Architectural Integrity and Strategic Alignment

Signal intent, set direction and deliver outputs, in particular ‘Domain Roadmaps‘ that are aligned to ‘Architecture Guardrails’, and the Partnership strategy